To market to market

Gleebooks is having a sale- on for the rest of the week I think. This book shop is a must-visit if you’re Sydney, not only is it big, and has a great ‘literary fiction’, crime, graphic novel, art book and non-fiction philosophy/social science/psychology sections, but it has an unpretentious, lived-in feel, with wooden bookshelves going up to a very high ceiling. It stacks books in piles on tables and on the floor, you have to walk through sideways sometimes if you have a big shoulder bag and don’t want to take out some fellow browser. The atmosphere is all the nice stuff about a crammed full second hand book shop, but less crammed and not dusty, all the nice stuff about a new bookshop, without all the dross you never want to buy anyway or the giant cheesy advertising material invading your view around the store, staff who actually read, and are cool but not quite as young, trying hard and shiny as those in some of the ‘I’m a cool bookstore’ stores around town. It feels comfortable, well-read, expansive and welcoming. Aaah.

Anyway, book sale. Upstairs, neatly arranged in tightly clustered rows, spine up, trestle tables, lovely, higgledy piggledy lack of order (think ‘blogging for your church’ sitting next to ‘sex and development’, ‘Jung as a writer’, sitting next to ‘imagination games for people working with children’ sitting next to ‘the complete gluten and dairy free cookbook’). The sale has been on for a while so I may be seeing the less popular remains, but there still seems to be some great stuff – especially in the sociology/ psychology/ theology/art book domains. There are novels on sale too, but I think the sale range is no better than a second hand bookstore for that, the best savings seem to be on the non-fiction stuff, where you can get current and interesting reference materials for half to a third of their RRP. Oh and some cards and postcards too, but I browsed very slowly and the store closed before I had a chance to look!